OF TIME AND THE RIVER

by Thomas Wolfe

"It sounds swell, doesn't it?"

  And Ann, whose sullen, baffled look had more and more been tempered by an expression of unwilling interest, now laughed her sudden angry laugh, and said:

  "It would be swell if everyone would only act like decent human beings for a change!"

  In spite of her angry words, her face had a tender, radiant look of joy and happiness as she spoke, and it seemed that all her hope and belief had returned to her.

  "But of course!" Elinor answered instantly, and with complete conviction. "And that's just exactly how everyone is going to act! Eugene will be all right," she cried--"the moment that we get out of Paris! You'll see! We've gone at a perfectly killing pace this last month or two! No one in the world could stand it! Eugene is tired, our nerves are all on edge, we're worn out by staying up all night, and drinking, and flying about from one place to another--but a day or two of rest will fix all that. . . . And that, my children, is just exactly what we're going to do--now--at once!" She spoke firmly, kindly, with authority. "We're getting out of Paris today!"

  "Where?" said Starwick. "Where are we going?"

  "We're all going out to St. Germain-en-Laye to rest up for a day or two before we leave. We'll stay at your pension, Francis, and you can pack your things while we're out there, because you won't be going back again. After that we'll come back to Paris to spend the night--we won't stay here over a day at the outside: Ann and I will clear our things out of the studio, and Eugene can get packed up at his hotel--that should mean, let's see"--she tapped her lips lightly with thoughtful fingers--"we should be packed up and ready to start Monday morning, at the latest."

  "Hadn't I better stay in town and do my packing now?" Eugene suggested.

  "Darling," said Elinor softly, with a tender and seductive humour, putting her fingers on his arm--"you'll do nothing of the sort! You're driving out with us this afternoon! We all love you so much that we're going to take no chance of losing you at the last minute!"

  And for a moment, the strange and almost noble dignity of Elinor's face was troubled by a faint smile of pleasant, tender radiance, the image of the immensely feminine, gracious, and lovely spirit which almost grotesquely seemed to animate her large and heavy body.

  Thus, under the benevolent and comforting dictatorship of this capable woman, hope had been restored to them, and in gay spirits, shouting and laughing and singing, feeling an impossible happiness when they thought of the wonderful adventure before them, they drove out to St. Germain-en-Laye that afternoon. The late sun was slanting rapidly towards evening when they arrived: they left their car before an old café near the railway station, and for an hour walked together through the vast avenues of the forest, the stately, sorrowful design of that great planted forest, so different from anything in America, so different from the rude, wild sweep and savage lyricism of our terrific earth, and so haunted by the spell of time. It was the forest which Henry the Fourth had known so well, and which, in its noble planted colonnades, suggested an architecture of nature that was like a cathedral, evoked a sense of time that was ancient, stately, classical, full of sorrow and a tragical joy, and haunted for ever by the pacings of noble men and women now long dead.

  When they came out of the forest at the closing hour--for in this country, in this ancient noble place, even the forests were controlled, and closed and opened by the measurements of mortal time--the old red sun of waning day had almost gone.

  For a time they stood on the great sheer butte of St. Germain, and looked across the space that intervened between themselves and Paris. Below them in the valley, the Seine wound snakewise through a series of silvery silent loops, and beyond, across the fields and forests and villages, already melting swiftly into night and twinkling with a diamond dust of lights, they saw the huge and smoking substance that was Paris, a design of elfin towers and ancient buildings and vast inhuman distances, an architecture of enchantment, smoky, lovely as a dream, seeming to be upborne, to be sustained, to float there like the vision of an impossible and unapproachable loveliness, out of a huge opalescent mist. It was a land of far Cockaigne, for ever threaded by the eternity of its silver, silent river; a city of enfabled walls, like Carcassonne, and never to be reached or known.

  And while they looked it seemed to them that they heard the huge, seductive, drowsy murmur of that magic and eternal city--a murmur which seemed to resume into itself all of the grief, the joy, the sorrow, the ambitions, hopes, despairs, defeats and loves of humanity. And though all life was mixed and intermingled in that distant, drowsy sound, it was itself detached, remote, eternal and undying as the voice of time. And it hovered there for ever in the timeless skies of that elfin city, and was eternally the same, no matter what men lived or died.

  They turned, and went into the old café near the station for an apéritif before dinner. It was one of those old, pleasantly faded cafés that one finds in little French towns. The place had the comfortable look and feel of an old shoe: the old, worn leather cushions, the chairs and tables, the mirrors in their frames of faded gilt, the old stained woods conveyed a general air of use, of peace, of homely shabby comfort, which suggested the schedule of generations of quiet people who had come here as part of the ordered ritual of a day, and which was so different from the feverish pulse, the sensual flash and glitter of the cafés of Paris. The noble peace and dignity of the great forest, and the magic vision of the time-enchanted city in the evening light, the silver, shining loops of its eternal river, still haunted their spirits and filled their hearts with wonder and a tranquil joy. And the old café seemed to possess them, to make them its own, with its homely comfort: it was one of those places that one thinks of at once, instinctively, by a powerful intuition, as being a "good" place, and yet they could not have said why. As they came in, the proprietor smiled and spoke to them in a quiet, casual, and friendly manner as if he had always known them and, in a moment, when they were seated in the comfortable old leathers against the wall, their waiter came and smilingly waited for their order. He was one of those waiters that one often sees abroad: an old man with a sharp, worn face, full of quiet humour and intelligence, an old, thin figure worn in service, but still spry and agile, a decent "family man" with wife and children, a man seasoned in humanity, whose years of service upon thousands of people had given him a character that was wise, good, honest, gentle, and a trifle equivocal. Each ordered an apéritif, the two women a vermouth-cassis, the two young men, Pernod: they talked quietly, happily, and with the weary, friendly understanding that people have when all their passion of desire and grief and conflict is past. The world that they had lived in for the last two months--that world of night and Paris and debauch--seemed like an evil dream, and the way before them now looked clear and plain.

  When they left the café, full dark had come: they got in the car and drove to the pension at the other end of town, where Elinor had already engaged rooms for all of them. It now turned out that Elinor had taken rooms for Starwick at this pension three months before, upon his arrival in Paris, but after the first two weeks he had not lived in them, although most of his clothing, books, and other belongings were still there. It was one more of his costly, wrong, and tragically futile efforts to find a place--some impossibly fortunate and favourable place that never would be found--where he could "settle down and get his writing done."

  When the four friends got to the pension, dinner had already begun. A table had been reserved for them, and as they entered the dining-room everyone stopped eating--two dozen pairs of old dead eyes were turned mistrustfully upon the young people, and in a moment, all over the room, at every table, the old heads bent together eagerly in conspiratorial secrecy, a low greedy whispering went up.

  Starwick and Elinor were apparently already well and unfavourably known to the old pensionnaires. The moment they entered, in the vast and sibilant whispering that went round the room, envenomed fragments of conversation could be heard:

  "Ah, c'est lui! . . . Et la dame aussi! . . . Ils sont revenus ens
emble. . . . Mais oui, oui!" At the next table to them an old hag with piled masses of dyed reddish hair, dressed in an old-fashioned dress bedecked with a thousand little gauds, peered at them for a moment with an expression of venomous and greedy curiosity, and then, leaning half across the table towards an old man with a swollen apoplectic face and thick white moustaches, and a little wizened old hag with the beady eyes of a reptile--possibly his wife--she hissed:

  "Mais oui! . . . Oui! . . . C'est lui, le jeune Américain! . . . Personne ici ne l'a pas vu depuis trois mois." The old man here muttered something in a choked and phlegmy sort of voice, and the old parrot-visaged hag straightened, struck her bony hand sharply on the table, and cried out in a comical booming note:

  "Mais justement! . . . Justement! . . . C'est comme vous voyez!" . . . Here she lowered her voice again, and peering round craftily at Elinor and Frank, who were shaking with laughter, she muttered hoarsely:

  "Il n'est pas son mari! . . . Il est beaucoup plus jeune. . . . Mais non, mais non, mais non, mais non, mais non!" she cried with a rapid and violent impatience as the old man muttered out a question to her greedy ear.--"Elle est déjà mariée! . . . Oui! Oui!" This last was boomed out positively, with an indignant glance at Elinor. "Mais justement! Justement! . . . C'est comme vous voyez!"

  That night Elinor was instant, swift, and happy as a flash of light. There was nothing that she did not seem to apprehend immediately, to interpret instantly, to understand before a word could be spoken, and to translate at once into a mercurial hilarity which swept everyone along with it, and made all share instantly in its wild swift gaiety, even when it would have been impossible to say why one was gay. The soup was served: it was a brown disquieting liquid in which were floating slices of some troubling and unknown tissue--a whitish substance of an obscenely porous texture. It was probably tripe: Eugene stared at it with a sullen and suspicious face, and as he looked up, Elinor rocked back in her chair with a gust of wild hilarity, placed her fingers across her mouth and laughed a rich and sudden laugh. Then, before he could speak, she placed light fingers swiftly on his arm, and said swiftly, gravely, in a tone of commiserating consent:

  "Yes, I know, darling! I quite agree with you!--"

  "What is it?" he said dumbly, in a bewildered tone. "It looks like--"

  "Exactly! Exactly!" Elinor cried at once, before he could finish, and was swept by that wild light gale of merriment again--"That's exactly what it looks like--and don't say another word! We all agree with you!" She looked drolly at the uneasy liquid in the soup-plate, and then said, firmly and positively: "No, I think not! . . . If you don't mind, I'd rather not!"--and then, seeing his face again, was rocked with rude and sudden laughter. "God!" she cried. "Isn't it marvellous! Will you look at the poor kid's face!"--And put light fingers gravely, swiftly, tenderly upon his arm again.

  The great wave of this infectious gaiety swept them along: it was a wonderful meal. Starwick's burble of gleeful, rich humorous and suggestive laughter was heard again; Ann laughed her short and sudden laugh, but her face was radiant, happy, lovelier than it had ever been, everything seemed wonderfully good and pleasant to them. Elinor called the waitress and quietly sent the troubling soup away, but the rest of the meal was excellent, and they made a banquet of it with two bottles of the best Sauterne the pension afforded. Their hilarity was touched somewhat by the scornful patronage of bright young people among their dowdy elders, and yet they did not intend to be unkind: the whole place seemed to them a museum of grotesque relics put there for their amusement, they were determined to make a wonderful occasion of it, the suspicious eyes, greedy whisperings and conferring heads of the old people set them off in gales of laughter, and Elinor, after a glance round and a sudden peal of full rich laughter, would stifle her merriment with her fingers, and say:

  "Isn't it marvellous! . . . God! Isn't it wonderful! . . . Could anyone have imagined it! . . . Frank. . . . Frank!" she said quietly in a small stifled tone, "will you look! . . . Will you kindly take one look at the old girl with the dyed hair and all the thingumajigs, at the next table. . . . And the major! . . . And oh! If looks could kill! The things they are saying about us! . . . I'm sure they think we're all living in sin together. . . . Such goings on!" she cried with a gay pretence of horror. "Such open barefaced goings on, my friends, right in the face of decent people! . . . Now, is that terrible or not, Monsieur Duval, I ask you! . . . Darling," she said, turning to Starwick, and speaking in a tone of droll reproach, "don't you feel a sense of guilt? . . . Do you intend to do the right thing by a girl or not? . . . Are you going to make an honest woman of me, or aren't you? . . . Come on, now, darling," she said coaxingly, bending a little towards him, "set my tortured heart at rest! Just tell me that you intend to do the right thing by me! Won't you?" she coaxed.

  "Quite!" said Starwick, his ruddy face reddening with laughter as he spoke. "But what--" the burble of gleeful and malicious laughter began to play in his throat as he spoke--"just what is the right thing? . . . Do you mean?--" he trembled a little with soundless laughter, and then went on in a gravely earnest but uncertain tone--"do you mean that you want to live?"--he arched his eyebrows meaningly, and then said in a tone of droll impossibly vulgar insinuation--"you know what I mean--really live, you know?"

  "Frank!" she shrieked, and rocked back in her chair, covering her mouth with her fingers--"But not at all, darling," she went on with her former ironic seriousness, "--you're talking to an innocent maid from Boston, Mass., who doesn't know what you mean--you beast!" she cried. "Don't you know we Boston girls cannot begin to really live until you make an honest woman of us first?"

  "In that case," Starwick said quietly, his face reddening again with laughter, "I should think we could begin to live at once. It seems to me that another man has already taken care of making you an honest woman!"

  "God!" shrieked Elinor, falling back in her chair with another burst of rich and sudden laughter. "Poor Harold! . . . I had forgotten him! . . . That's all this place needs to make it perfect--Harold walking in right now to glare at us over the tops of his horn-rimmed spectacles--"

  "Yes," said Starwick, "and your father and mother bringing up the rear and regarding me," he choked, "--with very bitter looks--you know," he said, turning to Eugene, "they feel quite bitterly towards me--they really do, you know. It's obvious," he said, "that they regard me as an unprincipled seducer who has defiled," his voice trembled uncertainly again, "--who has defiled the virtue of their only darter!" he brought this word out with a droll and luscious nasality that made them howl with laughter.

  "But really," he went on seriously, turning to Elinor as he wiped his laughter-reddened face with a handkerchief, "I'm sure that's how they feel about it. When your mother and father came to the studio the other day and found me there,"--Elinor's parents were at that time in Paris--"your father glared at me in much the same way that Cotton Mather would look at Casanova. But quite! He really did, you know. I'm sure he thought you had become my concubine."

  "But, darling," Elinor replied, in her playful coaxing tone, "can't I be your concubine? . . . Oh, how mean you are!" she said reproachfully. "I do so want to be somebody's concubine." She turned to Eugene protestingly. "Now is that mean or not? I ask you. Here I am, a perfectly good well-meaning female thirty years old, brought up in Boston all my life, and with the best advantages. I've been a good girl all my life and tried to do the best I could for everyone, but try as I will," she sighed, "no one will help me out in my lifelong ambition to be somebody's concubine. Now is that fair or not?--I ask you!"

  "But not at all!" said Starwick reprovingly. "Before you can realize your ambition you've got to go out first and get yourself a reputation! . . . And," he added, with a swift exuberant glance at the crafty whispering old heads and faces all around them, "--I think you're getting one very fast."

  They went upstairs immediately to the rooms that Elinor had engaged. Starwick had two comfortable big rooms in one wing of the pension; in his living-room a
comfortable wood-fire had been laid and was crackling away lustily. Elinor had taken a small bedroom for Eugene and a larger room for herself and Ann. In Ann's room a good wood-fire was also burning cheerfully. Elinor and Starwick obviously wanted to be alone to talk together--they conveyed this by a kind of mysterious more-to-this-than-meets-the-eye quietness that had been frequent with them during all these weeks. They announced that they were going for a walk.

  LXXXVI

  When they had gone, Eugene went to Ann's door and knocked. She showed no surprise at seeing him, but stood aside sullenly until he had come in, and then closed the door behind him. Then she went back, sat down in a chair before the fire, and leaned forward upon her knees, and for some time stared dumbly and sullenly into the crackling flames.

  "Where are the others?" she said presently. "Have they gone out?"

  "Yes," he said. "They went for a walk. They said they'd be gone about an hour."

  "Yes," she said cynically, "and they thought it would be good for me if you and I were left alone for a while. I'm such a grand person that something just has to be done for me. God!" she concluded bitterly, "I'm getting tired of having people do me good! I'm fed up with it!"

  He made no reply to this and she said nothing more. Her big body supported by her elbows, she continued to lean forward and stare sullenly into the flames.

  He had taken a seat in another chair, and at length the silence, and his position in the chair, and the girl's sullen expression became painfully awkward, unhappy and embarrassing. He got up abruptly, took a pillow from the bed, threw it upon the floor, and lay down flat beside her chair, stretched out comfortably with his head to the dancing flames. The feel of the fire, its snap and crackle, the soft flare and fall of burned wood ash, and the resinous piny smell, together with the broad old wooden planking of the floor, the silence of the house and the feel of numb silent night outside, something homelike in the look of the room--these things, together with Ann's big New England body leaned forward towards the fire, the sullen speechless integrity of her grand and lovely face, and the smell of her, which was the smell of a big healthy woman warmed by fire--all of these things filled his senses with something immensely strong, pleasant, and familiar, something latent in man's blood, which he had not felt in many years, and that now was quiet but powerfully reawakened. It filled his heart, his blood, his senses with peace and certitude, with drowsy sensual joy, and with the powerful awakening of an old perception, like the rediscovery of an ancient faith, that the sensuous integument of life was everywhere the same, that the lives of people in this little town in France were the same as the lives of people in the town he came from, the same as the lives of people everywhere on earth. And after all the dark and alien world of night, of Paris, and another continent, which he had known now for several months, this rediscovery of the buried life, the fundamental structure of the great family of earth to which all men belong, filled him with a quiet certitude and joy.